Blueridge Weekend

A few of us borrowed a friend’s cabin up near Blue Ridge and drove up for the weekend, took the scenic route through Dahlonega, Blairsville and up 19 to 76. Something uplifting about the mountains. We navigated those winding roads slower than the traffic behind us would have preferred but it was a safe speed and very visually engaging, what with the roadside leaves gone for winter. The distant ridge lines were accessible to hungry eyes and the slopes themselves were similarly denuded, kind of raw, primeval maybe. Puts you in touch with the old profound being thing that Jung was so taken with, archetypes and all that.

As we were unloading the wine and stuff I noticed the camp journal and paged through to find the entry I had made last time we came up, ten years ago. I must have been reading Raymond Chandler around that time, or listening to Garrison Keillor’s Guy Noire, for this is what I put down in April 2003:

We finally pulled in about midnight. The moon hung in the west like an overripe melon but just a slice. It was a crescent moon. You couldn’t see it though, being overcast, and the rain was so thick you had to dodge it like traffic on Spaghetti Junction. Louie brought in the bags and I had Irene mix up a pitcher of Bloody Marys but she spilled it on the landing. That’s when we found the body. She was blond, with wide shoulders, narrow feet in red spike heels, her black dress primly covering her ankles – but that was all. You could tell from the rest of her that he hadn’t fooled anyone. Larry and Jock took it down to the dock, rowed out beyond the breakwater and used the anchor to seal the deal. By then snow was swirling in their single headlight and we knew we were in for it.

Makes me want to continue it on out, novel length. Anyway, it was fun to re-encounter a ten year old off-the-top-o-me-head journal entry.

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Image: Sunset on Coosa Bald as seen from the UGA Georgia Mountain Research and Education Center in Blairsville, Ga. by UGA College of Ag via their flickr photo stream and used under a Creative Commons license; Feature image of journal by the author, Tom Ferguson.